Читать книгу Crime Incorporated - William Balsamo - Страница 15

VII

Charleston Eddie’s Last Sunday Matinee Flick

In calculating the revenge he would take against the White Hand, Frankie Yale decided that it would be foolhardy to strike back pell-mell with another ambush or mass shooting. There’d been two bloodbaths in less than a month, one against each side, and what had really been achieved? The score was dead even: three White Handers and three Black Handers had been wiped out, along with one woman from each of the “families.”

“So what’s gonna happen if we hit ’em back?” Yale asked some of the boys who dropped into his office after Anna Balestro’s funeral. “Sure, we knock off a few more miserable micks. But then what happen? They come back at us again, maybe even waste our wives or girls. I don’t like it. They ain’t playing percentages.”

“What you got in mind?” Augie the Wop put in. “You think we should maybe not do nuthin’ for what they done, eh, Frankie?”

Augie didn’t intend to sound sarcastic, but the question was pregnant with derision.

The blood rising in his face, Yale jumped to his feet and brought his fist down on the desk. “Those big balls on you,” he bellowed, “you better take them to wherever you got ’em and get your old ones back. If you don’t, I’m gonna break ’em down to size.”

Pisano paled. He turned warily and stared at Yale’s compare, Don Giuseppe Balsamo, who was reposing in the maroon velvet armchair, the one Frankie’s father-in-law had liked so much until he died in it. Augie was seeking some support from the man who was his good friend. But Don Giuseppe had his gaze fixed on the floor in front of his feet, scrupulously avoiding Pisano’s eyes.

Sparing people from Frankie Yale’s wrath was not one of Balsamo’s commitments to his Mafia hefdom.

“Awright, Frankie, for chrissake, lay off him,” Fury Argolia pleaded. “He didn’t mean to insult you.”

Fury, his right arm in a black cloth sling to facilitate the healing of the bullet hole in his shoulder, was one of the select few Black Handers who could speak up to Yale and not incur his wrath. Frankie respected the fiery Argolia, because he measured a few cuts above all the others in intelligence. He also was an amiable departure from the conventional Black Hander whose only calling was gangsterism. Argolia didn’t have to be a mobster, because his career as a successful restaurateur preceded his entry into the rackets. His friendship with Yale and some of the boys in the mob had evolved years before when they began patronizing Fury’s eating establishment. Gradually that association aroused his interest in the Black Hand’s activities and ultimately brought about his involvement with them.

In the early years, when the Italian gang was a loosely-knit organization and had yet to be molded by Frankie Yale into a unified force with solid direction and purpose, Fury’s role was that of confidant and “advisor.” After the Black Hand broke into the big time and cut itself into the White Hand’s protection rackets on the waterfront and in other areas, Argolia became a “high counselor” for the gang, directing a branch in which he had firsthand expertise—the shakedown of retail merchants for protection.

Argolia considered the time and effort he invested in the Black Hand organization something akin to civic duty, much the way law-abiding citizens serve on school committees and join neighborhood associations or the Elks, the Kiwanis, and the Knights of Columbus.

There was a brief moment of scowling silence after Fury had interrupted Frankie’s tirade against Augie the Wop. Then Yale sat down and snorted in amusement at Argolia’s intercession on Pisano’s behalf.

Frankie’s lips curled gradually into a smile. “Fury, you are smart,” he said slowly. “You and I are old friends. Did you understand me when I said there been two big killings in a month and four of theirs and four of ours are gone? Do I make sense to you?”

“Sure you do, Frankie,” Argolia said. “You want to end the mass murders, but that doesn’t mean what they did to us on Saturday night is forgiven…”

“Exactly!” Yale burst in, turning to Augié the Wop with a penetrating stare. “Why the hell ain’t you smart like him, eh? See how Fury understands me?” Then with a level, measured gaze at Battista Balsamo, Frankie asked in a reverent tone, “What do you think, compare? Do I make sense or don’t I?”

Balsamo shifted uneasily in the chair.

“Frankie, I got no bones to pick with you,” Don Giuseppe said with a polite smile. “You know I go all the time with what you say. If you think we should not waste them by the numbers…well, you’re the boss, my good friend…And Augie didn’t mean no insult…”

Balsamo gestured toward Pisano, who sat stiffly in the chair beside Yale’s desk. Augie the Wop’s dark heavy eyebrows slanted in a hard frown, almost obscuring his small brown eyes. He was almost relieved that Fury and Don Giuseppe had taken the pressure off by placating Yale.

“Yeah,” Frankie snorted, “I see now you people understand me and see things like I see them.”

Yale leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk.

“Listen to me,” he said in a low but intense tone. “You gotta look at it from how things gone for us. Look, we went big-time little more than three years ago, right? So what we did was cut ourselves in for big hunk of everything those micks had going for them. They operating for years, right? And we come in and become big men right away…”

Yale pounded his fist on the desk again.

“We did it with muscle,” he said sharply. “We showed ’em we weren’t scared to move in their territory. We took over and we come a long way…”

Frankie methodically went over the Black Hand’s achievements: the infiltration of the waterfront that snagged more than a score of shipping firms and pier operators under the Italian gang’s terrifying thumb; the commanding lead taken over the White Hand in the first thirteen months of bootlegging since the Volstead Act became law and ushered in the era of Prohibition; the burgeoning control over South Brooklyn’s small businessmen who’d been terrorized into paying weekly protection tribute to Fury Argolia’s enforcers; the many other activities such as hijacking and warehouse ripoffs that were directing thousands of dollars weekly into the Black Hand’s coffers.

“So what do the drunken micks do?” Yale went on. “They try to stand up to us. They wanna teach us lesson and they waste Crazy Benny. But we don’t stand still for that. We get back at them…boy, how we get back!”

Yale rocked back in his chair, laughing hard.

“We take one out ourselves. But what a score…we…we…”

Yale could hardly contain himself now. His voice was so choked up by laughter that he was unable to speak.

“We take out their number-one guy,” chortled Two-Knife Willie, who was standing in his usual place by the window. For a change he wasn’t cleaning his fingernails with the knife in his hand. He was running the blade up and down a day’s stubble of beard on his right cheek, making a shaving sound. As he spoke, Altierri lowered the knife from his face and made a quick, slicing gesture across his throat.

“So Denny Meehan makes the score even, eh, Frankie?” Altierri’s thin lips twitched.

“More—more than that,” Yale said, still chuckling. “Meehan makes like five Crazy Bennys. When you want the big man, they gotta sit up and take notice.”

“But then they come back and steal our booze,” Fury observed with his usual objectivity. “So we pull the Sagaman’s thing and you got three of them gone and how many more laid up…”

Argolia’s voice trailed off, then he turned to Yale, his face suddenly somber, and nodded his head in agreement.

“But they don’t stand still,” Fury continued. “They pay us back quick…”

“Right, right, right!” Yale snapped, his voice triumphant. “That’s my whole point! It’s tit for tat. And what I’m saying is that ain’t the way to play with them micks. Don’t forget—they been around a long time and they know the score. They know how to play the game…”

Yale suddenly turned to the window and pointed a finger in a direction which he meant to indicate Chicago.

“Look at. Johnny Torrio and Capone,” Yale said gravely. “They got their own Irish bastards up against them. And you know Johnny and Al ain’t no dumdums. They’re smart. Yeah, they’re smart and they know what to do. But they got that Dion O’Bannion and his bunch, and they can’t get nowhere yet. It takes time. Sooner or later they gonna put the micks down, but you can’t do a thing like that in twenty-four hours.”

“And if you’re smart, you don’t pull no more ambushes for a big score, right, Frankie?” piped Augie the Wop, now at last finding his voice after Yale’s scathing denunciation.

“Smart boy,” Yale complimented, pleased that he had finally gotten through to the numb-skulled Pisano. “I forgive you, Augie, because I know sometimes your brain sleeps while you are awake.”

The office exploded with laughter, but Yale quickly called for quiet.

“I got one thing I want to say,” he rasped, his eyes opening wide. “We are gonna even the score for what those goddam Irishers did. But it’s gonna be done nice and easy…”

Yale narrowed his eyes and made his mouth a tight slit as he glared across the room at the plaque on the wall bearing the two broken knife handles hanging in memory of the number Altierri had done on Greaseball Pignatore, the squealer.

“We know who the ones are who shot us up in Coney, don’t we, eh?” Yale asked meaningfully.

“Sure, Frankie,” Argolia said, putting his hand up to his shoulder. “I know who hit me…that sonofabitch Charleston Eddie…” Fury drew in a deep breath. “And I also know he was one who got Anna,” he said slowly. “I know that because he was the only one who had revolver. The others all had big artillery.”